This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This blog is about technology, as well as some of my personal interests. I am the CEO/CTO of Virtual Photons Electrons. I was the CTO for MEMEX for three years, the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute from May 2010 to January 2014 and prior to that I spent 23 years at Sun Microsystems.

What is extremely impressive about ADEX is the new position they created. Traditionally, you have CNC programmers and machinists which are separate positions. Adex has created a hybrid role where employees must be accomplished CNC programmers AND skilled machinists. The CNN video interviews a number of Adex employees. Each employee make it very clear that, by wearing both hats, it gives them the satisfaction of both designing parts and then actually creating the part.

One of the Adex founders made the statement that for each open position they had 100 applicants who applied. They still had great difficulty finding qualified employees. The reason is the need for the combined skill set. As technologies such as MTConnect greatly improve machine tool efficiency, this new hybrid position will become the norm and not the exception. It is very, very cool to see this rebirth of manufacturing. As the video indicated, this might be exactly what manufacturing needs to bring the young, gamer generation into manufacturing.

This is not your father's manufacturing industry anymore. This really is the new face of blue collar workers. Also, these new workers are making $50,000 to $80,000 in South Carolina.

About Dave Edstrom

This is Dave Edstrom's personal blog called Photons and Electrons. This is the same name of the blog I had for Sun Microsystems for many years. I am the CEO/CTO for Virtual Photons Electrons, LLC. More info is available at http://VirtualPhotonsElectrons.com I was the CTO for MEMEX for almost three years. More information on MEMEX is at http://MemexOEE.com